


The Best Parts of Blaine in NYC (According to Kurt Hummel)

by flickerthenflare



Category: Glee
Genre: Canon Gay Character, Fluff, M/M, New York City, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 06:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flickerthenflare/pseuds/flickerthenflare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kurt appreciates Blaine on our behalf. Written for the blaine love fest on tumblr (blainelovefest.tumblr.com).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Parts of Blaine in NYC (According to Kurt Hummel)

Kurt thought he knew every peculiarity about Blaine by the time his boyfriend graduated high school – the nerdy side that comes out with prolonged exposure to Sam, the insecurities about his appearance, the way he’ll eventually break down and test out the convincingness of his accents in restaurants with his brother, the amount time he spends in front of a mirror rehearsing his expressions – but living with Blaine has opened a whole new world of insights. 

They’re little things that Kurt discovers, mostly, that come from seeing someone as they live their life day in and day out and not just when they’re putting on a show. He’s testing out a brand new environment once again. He’s living on his own, or at least away from his parents or any other authority figures. He’s figuring out what rules he wants to set for himself and how to live with people he’s chosen to treat as family and Kurt is so, so far gone in love watching quietly as the love of his life he met as a boy in a uniform that didn’t quite fit grows up a little more in the process. 

He can’t name all the reasons why he loves Blaine in New York City, but he comes up with a short list when Isabelle asks about the new Blaine-inspired skip in his step after his arrival.

**1) He protects Kurt** from the people dressed as oversized furry creatures in Times Square that Kurt hates going near but can’t avoid with all the other people crowding the sidewalks on the way to work or Broadway shows or tourist traps. 

Kurt understands that they’re just people under all that nasty unwashed felt and shag, any they’re really not any more terrifying than Glee competition judges dressed as vampires, but they look like stuffed toys gone wrong and he’s had too many nightmares that go that way.

“Imitation Mario Brothers warning!” 

It’s like a well-coordinated dance so Blaine can put himself between Kurt and the costumes that make his skin crawl. Blaine squeezes Kurt to his side to keep him from overcorrecting and fleeing into an oversized Smurf. No matter how silly the threat, Blaine shields Kurt with his body. Kurt unabashedly lets him, because no ensemble at Vogue, even from the “unexpected leather” feature, could be as terrifying as what he sees on the way there. 

“Why would anyone want that picture?” He’s whining, and he doesn’t care. He can’t imagine getting that close on purpose to a stormtrooper and his (hopefully) fake gun.

“Same reason people want pictures with a stranger dressed up as Santa?”

“You can see his face! Most of it, anyway, and you can pull of his beard to see the rest if you want to be that kid.”

Blaine releases his hold on Kurt’s waist once they’re a little further from Broadway. “Safe again!” He kisses Kurt’s cheek with a loud smack.

“So dashing.”

Blaine ducks his head to hide his blush. He goes so far as to offer to escort Kurt to and from the Conde Nast building so he can go to work without fear, but they agree that would be excessive. 

Blaine claims to need to be in midtown whenever Kurt’s heading that way anyway.

**2) He thinks food is communal.** Santana almost follows through on her threat of inventive vengeance for the time he helps himself to the knockoff Breadstix breadsticks she finds in Queens, but he also picks up cupcakes for Rachel whenever he’s within a quarter mile of a vegan bakery and doesn’t mind when Santana raids his Coke Zero stash in retribution for the breadsticks. For every swing of coffee that Blaine steals from Kurt’s cup there’s an offer to split a cookie. There are restaurants Kurt can’t stand going to without Blaine because it’s so much better when Blaine’s there to order a complementary entrée and then swap half. 

“You two are seriously gross,” Santana informs them when she’s there to witness it.

“Eww, Kurt’s mouth has been there, how could I possibly like that?” Blaine sasses back while Kurt steals Blaine’s water glass waiting for the waitress to come back and refill his. Blaine ruins his joke by smiling adoringly at Kurt.

Kurt’s stance on sharing food is similar to his stance on PDA: horrifying in theory and probably disgusting to witness, but having someone to share it with is too satisfying to resist the occasional smug indulgence.

“This isn’t what food kink is supposed to look like.”

Rachel steals a french fry from Santana’s plate.

“Are you flirting with me, Berry?”

Rachel cheekily chomps on her fry. 

Santana slaps her hands on the table and glares hard at Blaine. “Stop this unholy sharing of food now. It’s contagious. You are not turning us into a commune. I swear I will make us move out of Brooklyn if that happens.”

While the Coke Zero access appeases her somewhat, what tips Santana over into forgiveness is when it’s late at night and they’re bemoaning that the delivery options at this hour aren’t as extensive as they’ve been led to believe, Blaine offers up anything in his cupboards and between the four of them they realize they can create something close to a balanced meal that all are willing to eat. Even if it’s vegan.

The day after that, when they’ve dragged themselves to the grocery store like they should’ve done days ago, Blaine announces dinner with a happy little “ta-da!” at the end. 

“It’s for everyone,” he explains when they stand there dumbfounded. They’ll occasionally pour a bowl of cereal at the same time or pick out questionable cheesecake at the deli together, but coordinating meals isn’t something they intentionally do. 

“What’s the catch?” Santana asks after she helps herself.

“It’s the same amount of work to cook for four as it is for one, and we end up with far less dishes to wash this way.” His smile’s as bright as sunshine. Even Santana can’t help turning toward it. 

Roommate dinners at least once a week are instituted shortly thereafter. 

**3) He’ll watch anything on TV as long as it’s for the sake of companionship.** Infomercials or cheesy Hallmark movies when Santana when she’s had a late night at work or Spanish telenovelas that he can’t quite follow when she wakes up in the afternoon? Sure, because she’ll unguardedly tell him about her day during the commercials. She’ll tell him the truth if he hands her a Coke Zero first. Rachel goes through a stint where she wants to know more about work affairs, more to say she knows of them than an actual interest in the subject, and they start watching the morning news while Rachel drinks tea, Blaine drinks coffee, and Kurt is busy perfecting his hair. Long after Santana and Rachel have left, Blaine will hold Kurt through his Gilmore Girls/Murder She Wrote/Ugly Betty marathons. They’ve fallen asleep that way a number of times, only to be woken hours later by Rachel’s early morning routine.

**4) When someone sings in the shower, Blaine sings back.**

**5) While Valentine’s Day is his favorite holiday, any major holiday puts a bounce his step, a song on his lips, and a craft project into Kurt’s eager hands.** Blaine has a project laid out for every one of them. Pumpkin carving for Halloween that isn’t just triangles that make a face. Weaving a cornucopia. Building a castle out of gingerbread with the level of intricacy Blaine learned on building model cars. He draws honest-to-goodness blueprints a month in advance. Kurt makes gingerbread people and dresses them in couture. 

Blaine’s careful gift-wrapping earns him a week’s worth of elf jokes from Santana, but then they all take dibs on whose presents Blaine is going to wrap next. Blaine protests that that’s not how decisions about his time get made, they have to ask nicely, but then he gives a practical demonstration in folding oddly-shaped presents and he’s so encouraging as they try to follow his example that they can’t bring themselves to ask that he just do it for them. Kurt suspects that was Blaine’s plan all along. 

**6) He finds a way to humanely get rid of Bruce the Boyfriend Pillow.** Kurt wants the space in his hope chest and for Blaine to hold him every night for the rest of their lives, which means Bruce needs to go. The problem is Kurt can’t figure out a humane way to make it happen. 

“Couldn’t you give him to the cuddle-needy?” Blaine asks, always willing to humor Kurt through his latest crisis: if Kurt the subject seriously, Blaine will do the same, even if the “serious” subject is feeling bad for a pillow he no longer wants but formed an emotional attachment to. Blaine pets at Bruce the Boyfriend Pillow, out of the chest and held to Kurt’s for the first time in months for the sake of de-cluttering their lives to make their possessions fit together better.

“That’s weird. We were exclusive. It’s not his fault he’s been replaced. Also, I don’t think Goodwill accepts used Boyfriend Pillow in case they have bedbugs.”

“I doubt it’s bedbugs they’re worried about.”

Kurt’s horror shows clearly on his face. 

Blaine sighs. “It’s just fabric and some stuffing. You can throw it out.”

Kurt clutches the pillow closer. “After all we’ve been through? That’s rude. And wasteful.” And dirty. Something about a pillow shaped like a torso drenched in rain and deteriorating with garbage seems too pitiful for Kurt to contemplate.

He could just keep it. They’ll still have separate nights where one of them is traveling and the other isn’t. He doesn’t want a back-up plan to Blaine, though, and it doesn’t seem fair to either of them to keep it. He can stand missing Blaine for a little as long as he always comes back.

Without a solution, Bruce the Boyfriend Pillow goes back under the bed for a few weeks until Kurt comes home to find Blaine in Santana’s chair – the once-abandoned furniture looking far plusher than he remembers it looking when Santana dragged it home – with Kurt’s seam ripper in hand calmly separating scraps of beige fabric.

“Oh my god you gutted the competition.”

“I repurposed it. Nothing wasted or thrown out. Really, Bruce became good friends with a once lonely chair and they decided to move in together.”

Kurt’s impressed. The scraps no longer look like the pillow they used to be, and they’re separated so easily that they’ll be easy to reuse on another craft. Still, he can’t help teasing at seeing Blaine’s rival for his affection in pieces. “Blaine Anderson, you are secretly vicious.”

“Noooo, I just know what it does to you…. When I win.” He smiles coyly up at Kurt. “Take that, Blaine substitute. I hope you and the chair are very happy together.”

The flirting works. Blaine, determined little go-getter that he is, so often wins what he sets his eye on, even if it’s just victory over a pillow, and his pleasure with himself has a ripple effect. “I need you to cuddle me. In our bedroom. Now.”

Kurt smile victoriously at the gulp Blaine visibly swallows. “We’re going to make that pillow so jealous.”

They race through the apartment to their bedroom.

Because sound carries well in their apartment, he hears Santana muttering, “ _cuddle me_ , ugh, how are they real?”

**7) Blaine picks up their strewn clothes from their enthusiastic “cuddling session” because he knows it’ll make Kurt happy.**

Kurt knows from time spent in Blaine’s room in the Anderson house that Blaine’s fine with a little clutter: books piled up, laundry on top of his hamper waiting to go inside, his lotion left out rather than returned to the bathroom shelf where it belongs. Kurt braces himself to be fine with a little disorder in their lives once they’re combined – at least Blaine is big on cleanliness so he doesn’t have to worry about spills or spoiled food – but Blaine treats the room they share like it’s a hotel room and he’s on staff. He’ll start to leave out books or clothes before catching himself and snatching them back up to deposit in their proper places.

“You don’t have to do that,” Kurt protests when Blaine slides out of bed to tidy up the mess they made, even though the thought of clothes staying on the floor, now that he’s not distracted by Blaine on him, makes Kurt uneasy.

“I know what you like,” Blaine replies simply as he drops them in the laundry hamper. Maybe it is simple for him. Considerate by default. He’s so considerate that Kurt lets Blaine share laundry with him, trusting Blaine won’t ruin his most prized possessions if he gets to washing them first. There couldn’t be a greater symbol of Kurt’s trust than being allowed to handle his laundry.

“Better?” Blaine crawls back on the bed. “Don’t pretend that wasn’t bothering you.”

“You can let it bother me next time,” Kurt promises.

“Next time,” Blaine agrees. He wraps his arms back around Kurt for more of the cuddling they distracted themselves from. 

He’ll relax over time. They both will. They’ll have plenty of time ahead.

Time with Blaine, it turns out, is Kurt’s favorite thing.


End file.
